A PhD program at the interface........

When three of the doctoral students from our Energy Science and Engineering PhD track graduated this semester, it wasn’t just business as usual. Aside from the graduates receiving job offers in the energy industry way before their dissertation defenses, these graduates have something special that makes all the difference—they were trained very differently than the way most doctoral programs train their students. 

When we first started our Energy Science and Engineering program, we did not just want to create a PhD program to graduate future professors only. Rather, we wanted to train a generation of doctoral engineers who will understand that the research is not only the production of knowledge but also the transformation of knowledge into valuable commodities, commodities that will retain the United States’ supremacy in energy technology businesses and create jobs to support our quality of life. We wanted them to understand that the transition from knowledge to commodities requires a great deal of understanding when it comes to technology, regulations, business, and social environments. We wanted them to develop a balanced set of skills to thrive in industry R&D environments and become tomorrow’s industry leaders.

These students all developed a sound command of advanced engineering design of energy systems, but more importantly, learned the broader aspects of policy, economics, and resource sustainability. Their dissertation research was more than just doing laboratory work and generating scientific data; it was enriched with managing projects and research teams, completing agency-industry design reviews, maintaining project schedules and budgets, achieving project milestones, and delivering project technical deliverables. All three of them managed several projects funded by the Crosscutting Research program of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Each of these graduates led their own team of 4-5 graduate and undergraduate students and mastered design review protocols and project management considerations, which included scheduling pressures, safety assurances, and risk management. By utilizing abridged versions of industry standards, such as hazard analysis or work procedures, they were trained using industry practices while simultaneously adding a level of safety and quality assurance that may not otherwise exist in the academic research environment. The Department of Mechanical Engineering’s newest industry-inspired research laboratories create an industry R&D environment within the university to enrich the graduates with these experiences.

These students wrote outstanding peer-reviewed articles but were continuously challenged to demonstrate that their research efforts would ultimately lead to industry design tools. Recently, the research work from one student has been picked up by a trade journal because it can be immediately used to improve oxy-fuel burners. Another student has developed a model based on experimental and computational work and added a module to U.S. Department of Energy software, which is used to design coal gasifiers.

Our energy engineering education and research program is on a quest to create a different learning environment. However, more importantly, we are poised to create a workforce of the next generation of doctoral graduates who will lead industry innovation, set up new technology businesses, and bring jobs to the economically disadvantaged Paso Del Norte region. Good luck to our Energy Science and Engineering doctoral graduates; we count on you.